


Nursery

by Arkiem



Series: Tantrums [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Consexual age-play, Cuddling, Daddy!Steve, Diapers, Gen, Infantilism, Little!Tony, Nursery, Other, Pacifiers, Panic Attacks, Thumb-sucking, age-play, bottles, mentions of spanking, non-sexual infantilism, tantrums
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:25:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7106671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkiem/pseuds/Arkiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The room was a mess. Yes, <i>the room</i>. There was no way Tony was going to call it anything else. Because it sure as hell wasn’t a nursery. An adult man couldn’t have a nursery.</p><p>(According to chronological order: 3rd Part.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nursery

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I got the intention to change my last fanfiction into a multichaper one, but I end up deciding to post them as different ones and create a serie. 
> 
> Thank you soooo much to mlaustin (how do you tag in here?) for helping me to correct this piece. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
> 
> As I said before, English isn't my first language and it's kind of hard for me to write it. Any mistake you may find here is all my fault for not being able to fix it after all the spent time and effort mlaustin did. 
> 
> (Ignore the mistakes in here too XD).
> 
> Enjoy!

The room was a mess. Yes, _the room_. There was no way Tony was going to call it anything else. Because it sure as hell wasn’t a nursery. An adult man couldn’t have a nursery. An adult man shouldn’t have a nursery. 

And that’s how everything started. That last thought was the one that made him suit up and punch and kick everything around the room – no repulsor beams, though. He wanted to smash what was in the room, not the room itself. 

With his own hands, Tony crushed every single one of the bars of the crib and threw the pieces around the room. The pillows and the mattress were ripped open and the stuffing was yanked out easily, until they were empty shells with nothing left inside. The rocking chair and the changing table were used as a baseball bat and baseball respectively, neither one of them looked like they used to after all the batting. The wallpaper was torn off meticulously, until the only thing that could be seen was were the a white walls. All the bottles, diapers, and other supplies that were kept in the changing table drawers had been piled up and turned into ash – well, Tony might have made use of the repulsor beams, but only a little. Everything was completely destroyed. Total destruction was necessary in order to avoid anything possibly being fixed. 

Standing in the middle of the remains, Tony surveyed the damage he had wrought. He pulled the hidden catch at his wrist to rid himself of his armor, the pieces clattering to the floor around him. It seemed like too much energy to order JARVIS to send it back to his workshop. Yeah, the nursery was not a nursery anymore. All that was left before him was a pile of useless debris. Regardless of what that little voice was whispering inside his head, Tony didn’t need all those things. He didn’t want them. He had a perfectly normal, luxurious, and comfortable room not far from here, and that was all he needed.

Tony had been aware of his Little side from a very early age. Back then he didn’t even realize what it was, he just thought that the uneasy feeling he had in his stomach whenever he saw a kid being taken care of and loved by his or her parents was jealousy. His parents never gave him that kind of love and care, and he craved it. He needed it. 

But as he grew older, things started to get weird. Abnormal. Often Tony would find himself sucking his thumb without even realizing it – thank God that happened when no one was around, kids could be really mean at that age. There were other times when he just didn’t feel like himself, he felt so vulnerable and fragile that all he wanted was to be held and cuddled. Sometimes he fantasized about one of his admired teachers holding him on his lap and just comforting him, but obviously that would never happen – could never happen – not to mention that those thoughts were very odd. And it was on those days, when he was feeling kind of off, that Tony was afraid of going to bed, because on those nights especially he would wake up in the middle of the night with wet sheets and pajama bottoms stuck to his skin. Not only was it humiliating, but dealing with soiled sheets was a pain when living in a boarding school. 

And the diapers. Tony couldn’t figure out why he wanted to wear them. Diapers were for babies, for God’s sake! Well, and for adults too, but for very old adults who couldn’t control their bodily functions, and he wasn’t either of them. He could excuse himself a little bit by saying he just wanted them because they would help him with his occasional bedwetting problem, but deep inside he knew that wasn’t the real reason. 

However, the diaper thing wasn’t something that Tony had to be careful of being found out about, unlike the thumb-sucking and the bedwetting, since there was no way he would be able to get his hands on one of them. Spending every day at the boarding school, even on most of the holidays and vacations, meant that he couldn’t just go and buy them. Needless to say that he would never dare to do that on the rare occasions when he was allowed to spend time at home. 

It was just by chance that one day, when he was doing extra chores that had been assigned to him as punishment for retaliating against a senior who had picked on him, he discovered that the school kept a supply of pull-ups. Surely there were some pretty young students who had problems with keeping their pants dry – poor kids, they were sent away at a pretty young age, even younger than he had been. Pull-ups weren’t exactly diapers, but they were the closest thing he could ever have gotten while living there. Tony hadn’t even hesitated to take one package to his room, adrenaline running through his veins all the way back, afraid to run into somebody. As soon as he got inside his room, he locked the door and looked for the perfect place to hide the package, but not without trying one on first. It fit, a little bit tight, but not that much. This was the first, and only, time he was grateful for being small and thin for a kid his age. 

Still, Tony knew this behavior wasn’t normal at all, what kid wanted to be babied? Most of them were anxious to grow up as fast as possible to be able to do whatever they’d like. So, even though he had managed to get a packages of pull-ups, he didn’t let himself wear them unless it was one of those days when he was certain his bed wouldn’t stay dry, and not just for the pleasure of it.

Nonetheless, he should have known that his secret couldn’t remain hidden forever. 

Tony remembered clearly the day he was summoned to his house out of the blue. It wasn’t his birthday – not that it mattered anyway, he had never had a birthday party or anything like that–, and it wasn’t Christmas either. It’s was a Wednesday, in the middle of the school year, all holidays or vacations still very far away. He felt uneasy, having no idea why his father wanted to see him all of a sudden. His hands had started to sweat as he walked to his father’s office, millions of thoughts about why he was there were zooming through his mind. He knocked on the door and went in, and he could feel his knees turn to jelly when he saw his father sitting down behind the desk, holding a package of pull-ups in his hands.

“Sit down,” Howard had ordered, and Tony walked to the chair in front of him, sitting down unsteadily. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, straight to the point. 

“I… I don’t... don’t know.” He couldn’t have chosen a worse time to stutter. 

“You don’t?” Tony shook his head. “So, you’re also a liar on the top of all of this. I didn’t raise you to be a liar, Anthony.” 

You did not raise me. Tony bit his tongue so he didn’t say that out loud. 

“One of your teachers called. She was worried about you. She told me you’ve been seen sneaking these out for a while now. So, would you mind telling me why is that? Why is my twelve-year-old son stealing fucking diapers?” Howard asked, his voice far from polite or calm. 

“They’re not diapers.” And he regretted saying that as soon as the words left his mouth. 

“Oh, so you know the difference. Now, tell me why you seem to need them, ‘cause this is exactly what I need now, a son who can’t even control his bladder!” he said, as he threw the package against the wall. 

“I… I don’t need th-them.” he mumbled as he ducked his head and looked at his hands, making eye-contact was something Tony couldn’t bring himself to do right now. 

“Then why are you stealing them? What kind of fucked up thing are you doing now?”  
“I don’t know.” His voice never sounded as thin as it always did when he was talking to his father, and he hated that. 

“How the hell don’t you know?!” Howard demanded before picking up the glass laying sitting in front of him, swallowing all its contents. It couldn’t have been water, Tony figured. 

“I don’t know.” Tony whispered, his eyes looking at everything but his father. Even that monstrous antique Howard used as a desk seemed more worthy of captivating capturing his sight attention at that moment. 

“Yes you do! And you’re going to tell me this instant because now I have to deal with your teacher, otherwise she’ll be a pain in my ass!” Howard yelled, putting slamming down the glass not in a nicely way. 

“I don’t know,” Tony repeated.

“The fuck Anthony, I don’t have time for this shit!” This time Howard emphasized on his words by slamming pounding his fists down on the top of the desk, making Tony literally jump in his seat. 

“I DON’T KNOW!” Tony shouted, more for fear than bravery. 

“TELL ME!” Howard hit the desk again, harder.

“BECAUSE I LIKE THEM!” Tony snappedyelled. 

His hands didn’t move fast enough to cover his mouth before saying that sentence, the sentence that fucked everything up. 

From that moment on, Tony’s life was invaded by people who told him he had to get rid of his Little side. Howard didn’t hesitate to send him to numerous psychologists where he had to put up with endless hours of therapy, trying to explain something he didn’t even understand himself. But he wasn’t stupid, quite the opposite he was a genius, so he never told the truth to any of the psychologists, he just said enough so his father would be satisfied when they reported back to him about his sessions.

Infantilism, that was the term they used, and he surely had no idea what it was back then. The books in the library had no information about that topic, and the Internet wasn’t completely available back then. 

His father made sure Tony never got his hands on anything Howard considered childish, he even got someone to go through Tony’s stuff in his dorm once in a while to make sure he wasn’t sneaking in anything he shouldn’t. Even Rhodey confessed to him once that Howard had contacted him and offered him a large sum of money in order to keep an eye on him and report back to him if Tony ever did something out of the ordinary. Rhodey denied the offer, of course. 

In the end, it kind of worked for his father. He got what he wanted, because Tony thoroughly repressed his Little side. He never got his hands on diapers, pull-ups, or any other of the things he wanted again. Every time he felt his mind slipping into that headspace, he forced himself to stay out of it. Yes, Howard achieved his goal to make Tony believe this part of him was wrong, incorrect, disgusting. But one thing was for certain: repressing and getting rid of it were two totally different things. 

And denying that part of him consumed a lot of his time and energy. Perhaps that was why for a while he had been a mess of a highly-functional alcoholic. 

After his parents’ deaths, Tony finally had the chance to be who he was, but the feeling of being and doing something wrong never left him. It wasn’t until after the kidnapping when he could no longer resist slipping into his Little headspace anymore. And even then, the only things he allowed himself to do werewas suck his thumb and play with some legos he had asked JARVIS to purchase for him online. Nobody could know his dirty little secret. There was already a lot of bad press all over the world about him and his one night stands, but nothing related to this infantile side of him. Well, nobody but JARVIS, but that was totally different. 

By now, Tony had read pretty much everything there was about infantilism and age play. That helped him to understand why he was the way he was, and he kind of accepted it as a part of who he was. But that didn’t mean he liked it. He still hated that part of him and he wanted to get rid of it. All the information he had read didn’t give him any clue on how to do that, though. 

When he had the Stark Tower built, he made sure to include a spare room on his floor, which remained empty for a long time. 

Eventually, on those days when he got so tired of fighting back the desires of his Little side, he started to build himself a nursery. He was awesome at creating things with his hands, so carpentry was a piece of cake for him, really. It didn’t take him long to create everything he ever dreamed of having. A crib, a changing table, a rocking chair, a high-chair. Everything a nursery usually had. JARVIS had even helped him to get all the supplies needed. It was amazing how many things one could find on the internet. Adult-size diapers with very childish designs, pacifiers, and bottles with nipples big enough for adults. Even onesies big enough to fit him! 

Needless to say he never really allowed himself to use that room or any of the items there, but his mind calmed down just a little by knowing the nursery was there, and that was enough. Well, he didn’t used it, at least not until Steve came into the picture. And even then, it wasn’t very often. 

And now he was standing in the middle of said nursery, refusing to feel any hint of remorse for tearing everything to pieces. Right now the only thing he regretted ever was building it. How the hell could he get rid of his Little side if he kept buying and accumulating things that only encouraged the behavior? No, destroying everything had been for the best, no matter how bad the feeling that it had been a terrible idea was. 

Tony bent down and pushed a button on his suit, which immediately pulled all the pieces together and flew them out of the room. Feeling surprisingly heavy, he walked toward the door with the intention of leaving once and for all. He would take care of the mess later, otherwise he was sure the remorse – which he wasn’t really feeling yet – would make him try to put everything back together again. 

He was almost out the door when he spotted something that caught his attention, something plushy, something that looked very familiar. He walked over to it and picked it up, immediately feeling the blood drain from his face when he recognized what it was. His teddy bear. The only one he had. The one that Steve had given to him. 

Suddenly, his legs lost all their strength and couldn’t support him any longer. Leaning against the wall, he let himself fall down to the floor, never stopping holding all that was left of his teddy – the arm. A sob escaped from his throat as he held the remains of his plushy to his chest. 

Steve had given him that teddy bear. He had literally dragged him to the toy store and made him choose one stuffed animal, arguing that it was unbearable for a kid not to have an animal companion to hold at night. Tony had complained that he wasn’t really a kid and that he didn’t need one, but Steve would not let him leave the store without getting one. So, he had chosen the first teddy bear he saw, simply wanting to leave the store as soon as possible before somebody saw them. It had been an exceedingly common teddy bear, brown with a “hug me” embroidered on his tummy. Yet, Tony had secretly loved it and had been very grateful to Steve for making him go and get it. 

Tony started to gasp for breath as though somehow the air in the room stopped being enough to fill his lungs. Why on earth had he destroyed everything? Why hadn’t he remembered that his teddy was there, abandoned by him a few weeks ago because his owner was too afraid of hugging him because it wasn’t an adult thing to do? Steve was usually the one who retrieved it from the nursery and handed it to him whenever he managed to let his little side out, and Tony was the one who always took it back to the nursery once his adult side came back, sometimes a little bit mad at Steve because he encouraged him to keep it on his bed even if they weren’t age-playing. 

As much as he tried to get all the air he needed, he couldn’t. A panic attack, he thought he was having a panic attack. Again. His hands started to shake a little, his body felt cold and his chest tightened too.

What if Steve got mad at him? He had been more enthusiastic about the whole teddy-bear-thing than him. What it he finally got sick of him? Steve had been very patient with him, putting up with a lot of his bad moods and rudeness, because even if Tony denied it, he knew he could be a total brat when he was caught between his two headspaces. In spite of that, Steve was always there, acting like a mother hen when Tony craved comfort, not hesitating to have a firm hand when necessary, though. Tony might push him away most of the times, but Steve remained there, patiently waiting for him to ease his panicked thoughts and give in.

But Tony doubted his patience would be everlasting, and maybe this would be the last straw. Perhaps this would finally drive him up the wall and make him back off. What would he do if that happened? How would he handle this situation on his own? Because he may hate when Steve insisted on Tony letting himself be Little when he hadn’t been for a long time, but at the end of the day he was always grateful for that. 

It was a fact that Tony didn’t want the captain to leave him, but if he decided to do it, Tony at least hoped it didn’t happen right now. Right now he just wanted Steve to come and help him, because the lack of air was making him dizzy, and he had broken out into cold sweat, and holding his teddy’s arm wasn’t helping at all, and he thought he would pass out, and he was literally freaking out, and the only person who was capable of helping him in this kind of situation was Steve, but Steve was going to kick him out of his life right now, and he didn’t know what was going to happen then, and he didn’t know why he always had to screw thing up, and…

\- - - -

“Hey Tony, why are you…” Steve didn’t finish the question, freezing at the sight of the scene in front of him. “My God, what happened in here?” he asked, shocked, looking at the mess. Steve laid his eyes on Tony and approached him right away, afraid that he was hurt or something, given the fact that he was hyperventilating and his lips were starting to look blue-ish. “Tony, buddy, what happened, are you all right?” Steve demanded as he kneeled in front of him.

Tony didn’t answer him at all, he just stared up at him. There was something in his eyes that Steve couldn’t read, and Tony continued breathing with difficulty. 

“Come on buddy, breathe with me… c’mon, in… out… in… out… like that kiddo, you’re doing fantastic.” 

Somehow Steve managed to settle Tony on his lap, while continuing to soothe him. He put an arm around his waist, a hand tenderly rubbing his stomach –he had noticed that this particular gesture comforted him. When Tony finally calmed down, Steve waited a little while longer before asking him what happened. He wished he had waited more, though, because his little one whimpered as soon as he did, huge and hot tears falling freely from his eyes.

That was weird indeed. Tony didn't cry often, not even when he was Little. He could get clingy, moody, fussy, even playful, but not teary. Not really. Maybe after a spanking he kind of did, but hey, it was a spanking. Steve asked him one more time what had happened, becoming more worried when his Little sobbed a tiny bit louder this time. 

“Answer me, please Tony, you’re worrying me. What happened? Are you hurt?” Steve asked, concern in his voice. 

“… Te… Ted…” Tony managed to say between sobs. 

“What?”

“Ted… Ted…” Tony just couldn’t give a straight answer, not when he was evidently trying to stop crying and he just couldn’t. Steve had no idea what he was trying to say. 

“JARVIS, is he OK?” Steve decided to ask the AI, knowing that the chances he could understand Tony were almost non-existent. 

“He is physically fine, sir. He appears to only be upset,” the AI informed. 

“What happened here JARVIS? Why is everything wrecked? Did somebody break into the Tower? Were we attacked?”

“No sir, no one broke into the Tower. Sir wrecked the room himself.”

Not wanting to believe it, Steve sighed deeply, because, despite what he wanted, what JARVIS had said made sense.

The Avengers had had a stressful week. They had assembled three times, and even if the battles hadn’t been that hard, they had been the type of engagements where the people they had been fighting got under your skin and onto your nerves. In addition to that, Tony had had to deal with some complicated issues with his company, problems that apparently Ms. Potts hadn’t been able to deal by herself as she usually did. And on the top of all that, he had clearly been trying to avoid letting his Little side to come to the surface. He had not been very subtle about it, it was obvious he needed to slip into that headspace to cope with the stress. 

But Tony had refused to let that happen. And Steve being his caregiver had gone into daddy mode on him, attempting to help, but that upset him even more. And when Tony was upset and between his two headspaces, he tended to do the most adult thing to do in this situation, at least according to him: sulking and hiding from the captain.

With the intention of giving him some space to cool off, Steve had waited a few hours before going to look for him. He shouldn't have waited that long. When he went to the workshop and didn't find him there, he started to get suspicious. Then, when he had looked in all the places where Tony usually hid when he was sulking and didn't see him there either, he started to get anxious. And when JARVIS told him where to find him without having to ask, he started to worry for real.

The nursery. Tony never went there willingly, not really. Maybe when he was completely into his Little headspace, but never when he was wavering in between his Little and adult mindset. Why was he there now? A tiny part of him wished that he had gone there to relax or something, that Tony was finally coming to terms with this side of him, but deep down Steve knew that wasn't the reason.

Needless to say that the captain wasn't expecting to see something good, but what he saw when he got inside the room wasn't anything he had ever imagined. He got a little scared when he saw Tony curled against a wall, clearly panicking, images of somebody breaking in floated through his mind as he got close to him. But then JARVIS told him what had happened, and well, that sounded very much like Tony. 

"Kiddo, are you ever going to let yourself go without doing all these things?" He used the word "things" in order to avoid saying "tantrums.". He didn't want to distress him more. "Why didn't you come and look for me if you were feeling like this? I've asked you many times to come and look for me when you feel like doing something this... extreme.".

But Tony wasn't paying attention to him, not yet. He kept sniffling and babbling something about Ted. Steve was still clueless about who or what that Ted was, so he just kept rocking him as he murmured reassuring words in his ear. It wasn’t until he paid attention to what Tony was clutching in his hands, that he understood what his partner was trying to say. Teddy bear. The only one he had. The one he was pretty sure Tony loved even if he said otherwise. And Steve couldn’t deny there was a stingy sensation in his chest, due to the fact that it was the one he had given him. 

"Hey Tony, shhhh, Tony. It's OK kiddo. It's OK. We can get another one whenever you want. I’ll give you another one, I promise."

It took him around an hour to calm him down. And it was mostly because Tony got run down from all the crying and ended up falling asleep in his lap. Steve stayed right there for several minutes longer, afraid that Tony would wake up if he moved an inch. He didn’t mind, though. He loved it when Tony fell asleep like that, allowing him to look at the peaceful expression, which he usually wore after throwing a huge tantrum. 

After some more time had passed, he stood up carefully, not wanting to wake him. Steve really had to find a way to help Tony to get into his Llittle headspace without having to throw these kinds of tantrums beforehand, otherwise negative feelings would be always attached to this process, and well, that could not end well. If this was one of his ways of coping with stress, it should be something that helped him to relax, not to get more stressed. 

Steve walked as slowly as he could so he wouldn’t disturb his little boy’s trip to dreamland. They went straight to the captain’s floor, which, thankfully, was directly below Tony’s. He might as well have stayed at Tony’s, but there were no longer any of the supplies necessary to put him down to bed sleep on Tony’s floor. Everything was kept in that nursery, and now it was completely wrecked. 

Eventually, Steve knew that he –or maybe Tony himself– would get it refurnished, he had already been looking through a lot of websites –JARVIS was very helpful for this– where children’s stuff for adults were sold. He had already thought about getting some stuff, but restrained himself from doing it, afraid that Tony would get mad at him for it. Despite that, it was still a shame that Tony had destroyed all of the nursery’s furniture; the furniture might not have been pieces of art, but everything that he had built had been simple and symmetric, yet beautiful. 

Steve came out of the elevator, thankful for not running into anybody on his way, and went straight to his room. Balancing Tony on his hip to free one of his hands, he used the free one to open a drawer and take out all the supplies he needed. He sat down on the bed, but when he made an attempt to put Tony down, his little boy opened his eyes immediately and clung tightly to his t-shirt. 

“No.”

“Tony, kiddo, I need to get you ready for bed.” 

“No.” His voice was barely a whisper. 

“C’mon kiddo, it’s going to be fast, I promise,” Steve said, pushing Tony a little bit from him, but he only succeeded in making him clutch even tighter. 

“I don’t want to,” Tony said, his eyes staring at the diaper that Steve had put on the nightstand. Steve’s eyes followed Tony’s. 

“Do you really want to go to bed without wearing one while we are sharing the bed?” And that was the only thing he needed to say in order to convince him. Because Tony might not like the idea of wearing diapers, but he liked it more than the idea of wetting the bed while he was sleeping next to Steve.

Carefully and tenderly, Steve settled Tony on the bed and proceeded to diaper him and put him in a set of footie pajamas. Although it hadn’t taken a lot of time, by the time he was done, Tony was already dozing off again. With no effort, Steve lifted him and placed him on his lap, wrapping an arm protectively around his shoulder and another around his waist, rubbing his tummy affectionately. Tony fell asleep almost immediately, listening to his caregiver’s heartbeat.


End file.
